“There’s a house on the property,” said Villa, “but it is rather a tumbledown affair.”
“It can’t be worse than Kennett Hall,” said Digby. “That will do splendidly. You can keep the girl there all night and bring her to Kennett Hall in the morning. I will be there to receive you. Tomorrow afternoon, just before sundown, we will take our final flight to the sea.”
“What about Bronson?”
“Bronson will have to be settled with,” said Digby, “but you can leave that to me.”
He had his own views about Bronson which it was not expedient at the moment to discuss.
“How are you going to get to the Hall?” asked the interested Villa.
“You can leave that to me also,” said Digby with a frown. “Why are you so curious? I will tell you this much, that I intend taking on the car and travelling through the night.”
“Why not take the girl by the car?” demanded the persistent Villa.
“Because I want her to arrive at Kennett Hall by the only way that is safe. If the Hall is being watched, there is a chance of getting away again before they close in on us. No, I will be there before daybreak, and make a reconnaissance. In a case like this, I can trust nobody but myself, and what is more, Villa, I know the people who are watching me. Now, do you understand?”
“Perfectly, my friend,” said Villa jovially; “as to that little matter of sharing out—”
“The money is here,” said Digby, tapping his waist, “and you will have no cause to complain. There is much to be done yet—we have not seen the worst of our adventures.”
For Eunice Weldon the worst was, for the moment, a splitting headache which made it an agony to lift her head from the pillow. She seemed to have passed through the day in a condition which was neither wakefulness nor sleep. She tried to remember what had happened and where she was, but the effort was so painful that she was content to lie with her throbbing head, glad that she was left alone. Several times the thought of Digby Groat came through her mind, but she was so inexplicably confused with Jim Steele that she could not separate the two personalities.
Where she was she neither knew nor cared. She was lying down and she was quiet—that satisfied her. Once she was conscious of a sharp stinging sensation in her right arm, and soon after she must have gone to sleep again, only to wake with her head racked with shooting pains as though somebody was driving red-hot nails into her brain.
At last it became so unendurable that she groaned, and a voice near her—an anxious voice, she thought—said:
“Have you any pain?”
“My head,” she murmured. “It is dreadful!”
She was conscious of a “tut” of impatience, and almost immediately afterwards somebody’s arm was round her neck and a glass was held to her lips.
“Drink this,” said the voice.
She swallowed a bitter draught and made a grimace of distaste.
“That was nasty,” she said.
“Don’t talk,” said the voice. Digby was seriously alarmed at the condition in which he found her when he had returned from a visit of reconnaissance. Her colour was bad, her breathing difficult and her pulse almost imperceptible. He had feared this, and yet he must continue his “treatment.”
He looked down at her frowningly and felt some satisfaction when he saw the colour creep back to the wax-like face, and felt the throb of the pulse under his fingers.
As to Eunice, the sudden release from pain which came almost immediately after she had taken the draught, was so heavenly that she would have been on her knees in gratitude to the man who had accomplished the miracle, and with relief from pain came sleep.
Digby heaved a sigh of relief and went back to his work. It was very pleasant work for him, for the table was covered with little packages of five thousand dollar gold bills, for he had been successful in drawing the funds of the Thirteen and exchanging them for American money. He did not want to find himself in Brazil with a wad of English notes which he could not change because the numbers had been notified.
His work finished, he strapped the belt about his waist and proceeded leisurely to prepare for the journey. A grey wig changed the appearance of his face, but he was not relying upon that disguise. Locking the door, he stripped himself of his clothes and began to dress deliberately and carefully.
It was nearly eight o’clock that night when Eunice returned to consciousness. Beyond an unquenchable thirst, she felt no distress. The room was dimly illuminated by a small oil-lamp that stood on the washstand, and the first thing that attracted her eye, after she had drunk long and eagerly from the glass of water that stood on the table by the side of the bed, was a beautiful evening dress of silver tissue which hung over the back of the chair. Then she saw pinned to the side of the pillow a card. It was not exactly the same shade of grey that Digby and she had received in the early stages of their acquaintance. Digby had failed to find the right colour in his search at the local stationers, but he had very carefully imitated the pen-print with which the mysterious woman in black had communicated her warnings, and the girl reading at first without understanding and then with a wildly beating heart, the message of the card saw her safely assured.
“Dress in the clothes you will find here, and if you obey me without question I will save you from an ignominious fate. I will call for you but you must not speak to me. We are going to the north in order to escape Digby Groat.”
The message was
